A republic which first gained its independence in 1821, Peru prides itself on its continual promotion of education. Education in Peru has seriously benefited from 1996 government reforms which ensured free and compulsory education for all students between ages 5 and 16. In fact, continual reform led to the establishment of the National Superintendency of University Higher Education (SUNEDU) in 2015; this organization seeks to improve quality standards for higher education.

As a direct result of the emphasis on education, Peru’s adult literacy rate has risen from approximately 40 percent in 1940 to beyond 90 percent in 2005. In fact, in 2014, the primary school completion rate stood at 95.9 percent, a significant increase from 63.8 percent in 1970.

In particular, Peru continues to prioritize the education of women and vulnerable peoples. Since 2000, there has been minimal difference in the enrollment ratios between boys and girls: in fact, while 76.2 percent of school-aged boys were enrolled in school, 77.5 percent of school-aged girls were enrolled. Similarly, the Peruvian branch of CARE, an organization operating in 94 countries to implement sustainable change, empowers Peru’s most vulnerable groups, including women, indigenous people and rural populations.

Beginning with grade one, education in Peru grants students the opportunity to obtain primary, secondary, vocational and tertiary education. Higher education requires three years. The oldest university is the Universidad Nacional Major de San Marcos. Founded in 1551, the university prides itself on prioritizing social responsibility, creating professional leaders and emphasizing sustainability and environmental protection. In fact, the university offers courses in health sciences, medicine, veterinary studies, pharmaceutical studies, engineering, natural sciences, the humanities and more.

Clearly, education in Peru has continued to thrive over the course of the past few decades. However, significant funding efforts and economic growth play a crucial role in securing educational opportunities for students throughout the nation. Therefore, it is incumbent upon world leaders to provide support for Peruvian education in order to ensure that both the nation and its students succeed.

Peru is home to sections of the Amazon rainforest, the Andes mountains and sites of the former Incan empire, which was the largest empire in pre-Columbus America. Although colonial architecture such as Machu Picchu and the infamous llamas attract tourists, poverty in Peru is devastating. Nearly 1.2 million Peruvians, 3.8 percent of the population, lived in extreme poverty in 2016.

The Peruvian economy continues to suffer from the devastating floods and landslides that have wreaked havoc across the country, and the central bank’s economic activity index fell to its lowest level in eight years. Currently, $1 is equivalent to 3.25 Peruvian Sol. This benefits American tourists seeking cheap food and accommodations but harms the Peruvian people.

Poverty in Peru Disproportionately Affects Rural Areas

Poverty in Peru runs deepest amongst the indigenous population living in remote rural areas. Peru is divided into 25 sections, and five of these are home to 45 percent of indigenous Peruvians: Apurimac, Ayacucho, Cuzco, Huancavelica and Puno.

The poorest areas are in the Andean Highlands, where a large majority of the indigenous Quechua and Aymara populations are living below the poverty line. Many of these communities are located in remote and isolated regions, so the quality and quantity of material and human resources are inadequate.

Rural poverty in Peru has led the indigenous populations to suffer disproportionately compared to the populations that live in urbanized areas.

In 2009, UNICEF calculated that 78 percent of children whose first language was Quechua or Aymara lived in poverty, compared to 40 percent of those whose mother tongue was Spanish. UNICEF also reported that only 32 percent of indigenous children between three and five attend school, with the number being 55 percent for non-indigenous children.

This data shows that the rural poverty in Peru has roots in high rates of illiteracy, particularly in women who make up a majority of the family income, and a lack of essential services such as education and electrical power.

In the last decade, there has been a drop in poverty in Peru, which has led to seven million Peruvians who are no longer poor.

Who ever thought that an alpaca would be essential to life? Well, to the indigenous tribes in the Andes Mountains, they are. But, with extremely freezing temperatures and adverse weather conditions in the winter, alpacas in the Andes are dying off in large numbers.

Secluded from most life and with little government help, “the indigenous communities living high up in the Andes … are some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in Peru.”

These desperate and cold Peruvians rely on alpacas for many of their daily necessities, including transportation to the market, wool for warmth, milk and cheese for nutrition and manure for fuel. Losing thousands of alpacas in the Andes is a devastating reality that the Peruvians are starting to grasp.

The weather has been so terrible in some parts of the Andes, killing tens of thousands of alpacas, that the government declared a state of emergency. Even children have been dying from the abnormal cold front. Ignacio Beneto Huamani, an Andes Peruvian, stated, “If the alpaca die, then we all die.”

Bringing hope and technological solutions to the Andes Mountains, nongovernmental organization Practical Action is working with the communities to try and protect the alpacas and, therefore, Peruvians’ lives.

There are three ways that Practical Action is working to protect the alpacas in the Andes.

1. Shelters

Building shelters from local materials is an easy way that alpacas can escape the cold and hopefully death. Trusting that sheltering more alpacas from the elements will save more, some shelters store up to 50 alpacas at once.

2. Nutrition

Keeping the alpacas in the Andes fed properly is another major concern. When the winter storms hit, most vegetation dies off. That which is left is usually used to feed the children and weak community members. Since the alpacas are necessary for humans’ wellbeing, this is a vicious circle.

Practical Action has introduced a way to grow blocks of barley for the alpacas. In a simple two-week process, barley grains are planted in a trough of water, exposed to sunlight and kept hydrated. Then the barley grains are formed into blocks, which are fed to the alpacas to help them recover their strength.

3. Veterinarians

Since most alpaca owners are not high-class doctors, they are not sure how to treat different diseases that the alpacas can contract. Practical Action has trained over 35 farmers to be aware of the different diseases and how to treat them. These basic veterinary skills are essential if the Peruvians want to try and salvage their alpacas in the Andes.

These three techniques that Practical Action is using are already helping some communities save their precious livestock. A local alpaca farmer, Emilio Chalco Valladares, said that “we save much time because we have the knowledge ourselves and diseases don’t spread. Animals don’t die any more.”

With more support and training, hopefully one day alpacas in the Andes will thrive again.

In the United States, the first image of Peru that might come to mind is Machu Picchu or an equally stunning mountainous view. Stereotypes aside, those sort of natural monuments mask the growing economy and standard of living in Peru.

Peru was listed as the 20th most free economy in the world as of 2015, progressing slightly slower than Chile, its southern neighbor. This is due to the decreasing value of copper, gold, silver and other major exports in Peru.

One characteristic of economic growth in poorer countries is that eventually places of historical and cultural values will begin to be preserved even at the expense of population growth or economic growth. For example, a new highway project in Lima was altered in order to prevent the destruction of a historical site.

Due to this growth, Peru is now in a sweet spot where the standard of living is decently high and the cost of living is low. Outside of Lima, $2,000 per month would cover one’s basic expenses. While living in Peru, international supermarkets cost more than grocery shopping at a local market. Interestingly enough, going out to eat at local restaurants often costs even less than shopping and cooking for oneself. You can get a three-course meal for three dollars at a local Picanteria.

One source puts costs of Peru and the United States against each other, and overall, consumer prices in Peru are 45.61 percent lower than in the United States. Paying rent is 60.37 percent lower than in the U.S. and paying for groceries is 50.71 percent lower than in the U.S. Living in Peru makes it easy to stick to a budget.

For anyone looking to retire in Peru, it’s possible to do so at $500 per month, though this makes extremely frugal living necessary. However, Peru is still one of the least expensive places to live in South America and one of the nicest.

Peru is a South American nation known for the immense beauty of its sites like Machu Picchu, a burgeoning food scene and the rich history of the Incan empire. In recent decades, Peru has recovered from a civil war and has been heralded as an economic miracle for reducing poverty by more than half in little over a decade. However, Peru still faces many serious challenges in relation to poverty that create refugees and internally displaced people. To better understand these issues here are 10 facts about Peru refugees.

Illegal logging in the Peruvian Amazon is a serious problem connected to displacement. An estimated 80 percent of all Peruvian timber is illegally exported to black markets. The former Chief of Peru’s Forest Inspection Agency became a refugee after his increasingly successful policing of the illegal logging industry caused him to receive numerous death threats and eventually flee Peru.

In the ’80s, Maoist terrorist group, Sendero Luminoso, waged a brutal war against the government. Gross human rights violations committed by both parties destabilized the country and left half a million people internally displaced. Many of Peru’s poorest people are refugees from the civil war who lost everything they owned after leaving the countryside and never recovered.

Environmental changes, such as drought and shortened growing seasons, have caused a wave of “climate refugees” in Peru. In Huancayo, the shrinking of a large glacier that irrigates the region’s fields has led to large amounts of migration. As altitude increases in the region so does the probability that changing weather patterns will cause displacement.

Although Peru has its own challenges of adequately settling internally displaced people, it has opened its doors to neighbors both near and far with initiatives to streamline processes to receive Syrian refugees and the creation of nearly 6,000 visas for Venezuelans to escape the current crisis.

Since a great majority of Peru’s most vulnerable refugees from the countryside move to nearby cities and urban centers, displaced beyond Peru’s borders rarely occurs, and as a result, the problem is often ignored by the media and international organizations.

Peruvian migrants have led a food revolution spanning from the U.S. to the United Arab Emirates. Dishes like ceviche and aji de gallina are new favorites of food critics. Michelin Star rated chef Virgilio Martinez is widely considered one of the greatest chefs in the world. He recalls that the instability of Lima in the ’90s led to him starting his cooking career outside of Peru.

In April 2017, flooding in northern Peru caused one of the country’s largest displacements of people. Up to 173,000 people were left homeless and 1.1 million in need of assistance. The International Organization for Migration is advocating for the U.N.’s emergency response program, Flash Appeal, to be allocated $38.3 million in additional funding to help in the building of shelters and refugee camps in Piura.

Formal property rights and land titles are urgently needed for Peru’s indigenous population to avoid displacement. Indigenous groups are allocated land by the state, but the government allows multinational corporations to drill on those lands without the consent of the community. Environmental degradation has led to the loss of employment, resources and health in these communities.

Land grabbing is a common practice in Peru. Often a large foreign corporation will illegally buy areas of land and dispossess its inhabitants of access to resources that the community’s livelihood depends on. Sustainable NGO GRAIN compiled almost 500 current cases from the public record of illegal land appropriation.

Issues relating to displaced people in Peru are handled by the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations, which began a process of both individual and group reparations for displaced people in 2013.

These 10 facts about Peru refugees not only demonstrate the important steps to resettle or compensate many of its refugees from its civil war, but also the challenges that lay ahead. The government has not addressed many current factors that continue to displace people, ranging from environmental problems to a lack of property rights.

Peru must empower its citizens, in particular its displaced people, by giving them a right to participate more fully in the democratic process or its refugee problem will not be resolved.

Pluspetrol, a private multinational gas distribution and power generation company, has granted access to its own company-sponsored educational programs for more than 200 young children in Bajo Urubamba, the lower region of the Urubamba province in Peru. The company’s Peruvian branch works largely in and around the Urubamba province and has contributed an estimated $100,000 to education in Peru.

Pluspetrol’s program, Programa Integral de Educación (PIE), offers scholarships to young Peruvians who live near the company’s Camisea Gas Project, which extracts and transports natural gas around the Urubamba River. The company intends to focus on participation in high school and university-level programs to improve the accessibility of education in Peru.

PIE has been divided into three separate scholarship programs:

Becas NopokiThis is a scholarship awarding full payment of tuition fees to exceptional students at the Universidad Católica Sedes Sapientiae. It specifically targets students who display enthusiasm in the fields of management, agricultural engineering or any combination of basic bilingual literacy. Through this scholarship, all courses are taught in the native language of the participating students. This provision includes the Peruvian dialects of Machiguenga, Yine and Asháninka to ensure indigenous populations do not feel alienated from the education system in Peru.

Programa 100This program focuses on students in their final two years of elementary and high school, respectively. The curriculum of Programa 100 focuses on developing skills in reading and in mathematical reasoning. Each year, this program helps approximately 75 school-aged children improve their academic skills and various options for higher education in Peru.

Becas Pre-UniversitariasThis program supports secondary school students in their senior year of high school in their transition to university. This program gives students hands-on experience outside of the classroom and attempts to prepare them for the future. It takes students beyond the classroom and prepares them for Universidad Católica Sedes Sapientiae.

These scholarships are meant to provide children in Urubamba with the necessary skills for a university level education. So far, all three programs have been incredibly successful and have made it possible for 90 percent of PIE scholarship applicants to gain access to general tertiary education as well as agrarian engineering, administration and intercultural basic bilingual education courses.

Harvests in Laramate, Peru have suffered from drought and severe rainfall, creating food insecurity and poor nutrition throughout the area. In response, local female farmers turned to techniques of their indigenous ancestors. Utilizing these techniques has yielded widespread benefits and helped combat the effects of climate change in Peru.

Mirroring ancestral techniques, farmers select healthy seeds and rotate the crops to maintain soil fertility and proper irrigation. In this practice, the women of Laramate have eliminated the use of agrochemicals. Instead, farming practices respect for the land and use only natural resources. As a result, harvests not only yield more crops but also produce more diverse, nutritious and climate resilient crops.

Women often play significant roles in preserving local, ecological and cultural knowledge across generations. However, indigenous women are also often the most neglected in political processes. According to a report by the U.N. Forum on Indigenous People, indigenous women are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including food insecurity. Empowering indigenous women can help them achieve financial prosperity and boost self-esteem while also unveiling valuable resources from a largely underrepresented demographic. As seen in Peru, empowering indigenous women has widespread positive impacts.

While working to offset the consequences of climate change in Peru, the women of Laramate are also working to empower indigenous women across the country. The Organization of Indigenous Women of Laramate and the Centro de Culturas Indigenas del Peru, a grantee of the U.N. Women’s Fund for Gender Equality, provide training and assistance programs to indigenous women in Laramate to help improve their economic opportunities. Between 2014 and 2015, these programs helped over 400 women in Peru by increasing women’s participation in public spaces and their ability to influence policy.

Comprising a mere 20-25 percent of the renewable energy workforce and approximately 12 percent of environmental ministers, women are largely underrepresented in environmental sectors. However, there is increasing recognition that climate change disproportionately harms women and international efforts to improve gender equality when addressing climate change.

In 2016, the Annual Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Convention on Climate Change committed to gender equality in climate change solutions efforts. Additionally, UN Women launched programs that bring women’s participation and leadership to the forefront of climate solutions.

Efforts to include women in climate solutions have widespread benefits. Women’s participation in politics often elicits greater responsiveness to citizens’ needs and increases cooperation across party and ethnic lines. Conversely, when women are not represented, policies can increase inequality and be less effective.

Recent international and local efforts are promising for the inclusion of indigenous women in climate solutions. On the local level, female indigenous farmers are directly combatting climate change in Peru while promoting efforts to include women in political spheres. By empowering indigenous women, communities in Laramate are creating a model of equal representation and sustainability for the world to follow.

From the mountains to the ocean, Peru is a diverse country, housing some citizens in highly populated cities and others in the most rural locations. While education in Peru has expanded, rural inhabitants do not always have equal access.

Children in Peru are required to be enrolled in school until age 16. After secondary school, however, student enrollment numbers begin to dwindle. As the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported in 2010, primary schools have the highest percentage of children enrolled. From primary school to tertiary school, enrollment rates decline about 50 percent. Despite this decline, 94 percent of Peruvian adults are literate, which is higher than the world median.

Education in Peru: Urban vs Rural

Children in urban areas have the easiest access to education in Peru. Those living in the Andes, Sacred Valley and other rural areas, however, struggle to reach education levels similar to those of their urban peers. These children are more likely to drop out of school due to family labor responsibilities. As recorded in the CIA World Factbook, of the 2.5 million children in Peru approximately 865,600 children are in the labor force. School life expectancy, or the number of years an individual is expected to spend in school assuming a constant enrollment rate, is 13 years for citizens of Peru.

Rural students’ school experience differs from that of their urban counterparts, as they have to walk several hours a day to get to school in nearby urban areas. Sometimes rural areas have schools, but these schools frequently do not have the resources or support to educate students at different levels. Instead, students of all ages sit in one classroom, making uniform curriculum development a difficult task.

Teachers are being trained to educate rural students under yearly contracts. This training can be challenging as most rural students do not know Spanish. Teachers have to learn Quechua, the native language of many rural students. Rural and urban teachers alike are faced with an inadequate hierarchy system. Teachers often do not know whether they will be teaching until a week before classes begin, eliminating the ability to plan ahead. These teachers are also unable to get necessary resources, fear being fired and are paid very little.

To overcome these obstacles, Peru’s Ministry of Education developed the Alternate Education for Rural Development program. Since 2002, this project has assisted nearly 3,000 young children in 40 rural schools and 11 regions. The program has been successfully accommodating rural students, as shown in 2012 when about 50 percent of students were enrolled in tertiary school and close to 70 percent were simultaneously working.

Other organizations are improving education in Peru as well. Unearth the World (UTW) works with nonprofit organizations in Peru to help provide women, children and teens living in poverty with proper education services. Peruvian Hearts helps Peruvian girls attend secondary school and college by offering scholarships ranging from $500 to $6000 per year.

Since assuming office in July 2016, Peru’s President Kuczynski has promised to modernize the economy and fight poverty in Peru. By expanding basic services and aspiring to membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Kuczynski hopes to leave Peru a “fairer, more equitable, and more united” nation.

Poverty in Peru dropped from 55.6 percent in 2005 to 22 percent in 2015. Peru has become a regional leader in education coverage, reducing dropout rates and reducing unwanted teenage pregnancy, among other indicators. The chief-economist for the Development Bank of Latin America praised Peru for consolidating its fiscal position and expanding the middle class.

Despite recent development, poverty in Peru still exists. As of 2012, 25.8 percent of the population was living below the poverty line, with nearly 5 percent living in extreme poverty.

To combat ongoing poverty, President Kuczynski seeks to launch a “social revolution.” Aimed at helping the most impoverished citizens, the new administration promises to expand access to basic services while also advancing Peru’s national policies and institutional involvement. These plans build on Peru’s active role in complying with the millennium development goals and show a strong commitment to the new challenge of achieving the sustainable development goals.

An early sign of success for the revolution is the $74.5 million joint investment between the Government of Peru and the International Fund for Agricultural Development intended to create rural employment and entrepreneurial opportunities. The targeted regions of this investment are characterized by chronic and extreme poverty and conflict.

Supporting President Kuczynski, Peruvian Prime Minister Fernando Zavala has expressed progressive, development-oriented policies to complement Peru’s rise into OECD membership. World Bank vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean, Jorge Familiar, supports this ascent, claiming the OECD’s dedication to “better policies for a better life,” complements the World Bank’s goals of poverty eradication and improved prosperity for all.

President Kuczynski has big plans for Peru, but the vast development across the nation in the past decade provides a promising foundation. Expanding basic services to the poorest citizens and positioning governmental affairs towards institutional advancement forecast a hopeful future for reducing poverty in Peru and realizing Kuczynski’s goal of a “fairer, more equitable, and more united” nation.

Although Peru has been continuing to prosper within recent years, there are still many Peruvians who live well below the poverty line. Peru’s government, along with partnering organizations, have been working to increase the coverage of health care in Peru. Target areas include those who live in rural areas with limited access to health care, as well as those living in urban communities that cannot afford health care.

In 2009, the Peruvian government passed a law mandating universal health insurance as a right for all Peruvians. Under the new extension of coverage, pregnant women and those with children under the age of five now qualified for the Ministry of Health’s (Ministerio de Salud, MINSA) Integral Health Insurance (Seguro Integral de Salud, SIS) program. At the start of last year, 2015 newborns whose parents did not have health insurance became automatically covered under SIS.

The Ministry’s desire to ensure health care for all Peruvians inspired SIS Entrepreneur, which covers independent workers and the School Health Plan, which covers children enrolled in school. MINSA’s efforts are truly making a difference, health insurance coverage has increased since 2010 by 20 percent, and 80 percent of Peruvians are now covered.

Despite the increase in health insurance, the expansion of services to rural areas remains a challenge. Incentives and compensation pay for working in rural areas or high priorities zones were introduced to help even out the density of health care workers.

Reformation on all levels of health care in Peru has been a priority within the past few years. At the end of 2014, a plan to repair and modernize facilities was released. The completion of the plan saw to the reconstruction of 170 provincial hospitals, 23 regional hospitals and 13 national hospitals. Major improvements on three specialty hospitals are to begin at the end of this year.

The proficiency of the Peruvian health care system also relies heavily on the networks’ abilities to work efficiently with one another. There are five leading health care sectors, as well as the private health care services. Thus, in 2013, there was a restructuring of services, resulting in the creation of a general overseer, the Management Institute of Health Services. MIHS improved the availability of primary services by making it easier for the other networks to respond to patients from SIS providers and broadened the pharmaceutical pool through integrating public providers.

Although MINSA is diligent with their plans for reformation and has made undebatable headway, humanitarian organizations still play a key role in providing health care in Peru. The Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children (FIMRC) works in two primary locations: Huancayo, an urbanized poor sector, and La Merced, a jungle area that is rich with native culture. FIMRC works with the hospitals there to improve health education in the community. The majority of health complications within these areas are preventable through basic hygiene knowledge.

Partners in Health is another organization deeply rooted in Peru. PIH is a partner with MINSA, and they operate 10 clinics situated in poverty stricken sections of Lima that would not have health care otherwise. PIH works to provide health education to the communities and is very invested in meeting the needs of the residents.

PIH is also a global leader in the study and treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). PIH began the construction of the Center for Global Health Delivery recently. The center, located north of Lima, will be a place to treat those with MDR-TB and act as a research facility for disease experts.

As the Oxford Business Group pointed out, investment is the key to the continued expansion and improvement of health care in Peru. Right now, Peru’s gross domestic product on health care is regionally low, at three percent. If Peru can continue to prioritize health care and increase their investment, health care will thrive.